Is Marxism Feasible?

[luiz]

It's actually pretty widely discussed, especially when it was new. Instead of dismissed as grotesquely ignorant, fantastically absurd fabrication which it was essentially, it was seriously dicussed in countless articles.

The same is also true for Marxism, isn't it? Even though it is a grotesquely ignorant, fantastically absurd fabrication it is still widely discussed more than a century after it's debut, to an extent that the CoC Theory can't even dream of achieving.

But, one aspect of the theory, that the west is the perfect, the culmination of human development, is something which is often present in many works and attidutes of intellectuals.

BS. Only a handful of intelectuals, even nowadays, would ever say such thing. In the 60's and 70's, the height of marxism domination in the academia, nobody would (OK, some would, but very very few).

Complete, utter nonsense. I mean, when the British Empire was commiting its worst atrocities, the historians and propagandists and poets were discribing the benign, holy purpose and intent of the empire. That same trend persists. When the West bombed Yugoslavia, thus provoking the worst atrocities that took place there, all the historians, media, propagandists and whatever, were euphorically describing the holy purpose of Western intervensionism in a way that was more then reminiscent of stalinist propaganda.

I'll give you that in the pre-WW2 years the marxist influence on the academia was still relatively small, and that Imperialism had alot of apologsists. But after WW2? C'mon. The only imperialism which found (a great legion) of apologists was the soviet one. Like Pablo Neruda, and Sartre, and well, pretty much all intellectuals.

I won't even begin to address your Yugoslavia claims. Yeah, genocide was not the problem, the western bombardment was
Oooooooook.

The US-UK imposed, nearly genocidal sanctions on Iraq, recieved similar treatment. I mean, all the reports of suffering and death were dismissed as Saddam's propaganda, despite the broad range of credible sources, stating that 1.5 million people died from the sanctions. Madeleine Albright even confessed to the atrocity, saying it was "worth it" but there was no outrage. I mean, I'm sure you can read something like what Albright said, in the nazi archives as well. Western benign intent is considered obvious and all the deaths were either enemy propaganda or "mistakes".

I suppose you support sanctions against apartheid South Africa? So why not against one of the worst tyrants of the last decades? Plus Saddam was allowed to get food and medicine from abroad, he didn't because he was more concerned in smmugling weapons.

During the second world war, it was taken for granted in the intellectual community, that the purpose of media was to spread state-glorying propaganda in Britain, US, west and so forth.

Not that much. WW2 was the turning point of marxist domination of the academic stablishment. Many communist intellectuals, after Ribbentrop-Molotov, claimed that Hitler was a peaceful man and the real villain was Britain.

Israel-Palestine situation is the most absurd example. I mean, almost everything that is discussed is fabrication. Because the west has conjured so many ridicolous myths around the situation, it no longer makes sense to normal people. Whereas in reality the problem is extremely simple: Israel has been for decades illegally occupied Palestine, pillaging, plundering, mudering . . . which provokes the violence against Israel. Instead, in the western media, Israel is this saintly democratic, western state, a glowing holy island in a sea of extremist scum.

It makes no sense to discuss this with you. You are fanatically anti-Israel. More than many suicide bombers, I presume.

I'm sure we've made progress and that it's not always true that intellectual culture and media (I say media, because journalist profession is very elitist) worships power, but the trend lingers. Most of the intellectuals have become deeply indoctornated state-worshippers who's main purpose is to simply fabricate falsehoods such as I discribed.

If we are talking about the Soviet State, than sure...

Yeah, I'm sure there were many people who wanted change from the crazed capitalism that kept the society divided and broken. I mean, the reason why Latin America is so backward today, and not the super power as was predicted about a century ago, is precisely because progressive movements (and such) have been beaten back and the countries have been left to kleptocratic regimes, virtual colonies of the US. A good example is Colombia. I mean, US policy makers thought it was obvious that South America was US playground.

Well the smart Latin Americans (like the great liberal Símon Bolívar) predicted quite correctly, in the late 19th Century, that caudillo politics and an ignorant population would keep Latin America in a peripheric position for centuries. It has nothing to do with the US but rather with our own, internal shortcomings.

BTW Colombia is looking real good now compared to the times of leftist presidents. The right-wing regime is extremely popular, the economy is doing fine, criminality and murder rate is lower than in Brazil or Venezuela (highest in the continent), even in a state of civil war. Take a reality check every now and then.

Nonsense. As for what you mean by Marxism... well, Marxism is an extremely broad thing. I mean, some argue, with very convincing logic, that western state-systems today follow a variation of Marxism. Marx was a very diverse intellectual, he had many ideas which we today follow. Personally, I'm not a Marxist, I'm an anarchist, but I know Marx wasn't the evil bearded wizard like he's described in western propaganda, and he wasn't the visionary saint as he's depicted in communist propaganda.

I don't think he was either. For me he was a rather limilted philosopher with a tremendous ego, who tried to describe things which he did not understand. He was a bad guy, in the sense that he despised democracy and individual rights, but since he never took any action we can't put him in the same level as, say, Lenin.

Many Marx's brainchildren are here to stay, just like many Adam Smith's ideas are here to stay. But the centers of power, cherry-pick those policies which best suit their intention.

Yeah, they have secret meetings where they discuss which policies to use in order to enslave the Third World and trash the environment.

 

[luiz]

The number of Marxists in the academic establishments of the west is quite tiny compared to the amount of fulminating against them that goes on. Academics spend a lot more time critiquing Marxism than promoting it.

Today? Maybe.
In the 60's and 70's? No way. Marxism was absolutely dominant in the academic stablishments, to the point where it's critics in Brazil called it "pensamento único" (the only thought).

 

[Arwon]

Wasn't Brazil a military dictatorship in the 60s and 70s?

 

[luiz]

Wasn't Brazil a military dictatorship in the 60s and 70s?

Yeah, what probably had the effect of radicalising even more the leftists of the academic stablishment...

 

[LesCanadiens]

I would hate to live in a Marxist society. I love the idea of there being a ladder to move up.

Then you must dislike that you live in a Western society where social mobility is far more difficult and less likely than you have been led to believe it is. You were born into the middle class, and you will die in it. Rags to riches stories make nice Hollywood plotlines, but in reality they are exceedingly rare. I could make the case that social mobility in Communist societies is essentially the same as in Western societies, the only difference being that Westerners typically think they have more social mobility than they actually do.

 

[Princeps]

The same is also true for Marxism, isn't it? Even though it is a grotesquely ignorant, fantastically absurd fabrication it is still widely discussed more than a century after it's debut, to an extent that the CoC Theory can't even dream of achieving.

Yeah, that's because there are people who see beyond the right-wing mindless propaganda. You see, some people have read Marx, and seriously discuss his ideas. As I've said, many of the ideas he advocated are followed by western governments. Many of his ideas are believed to be obvious of any state institution.

BS. Only a handful of intelectuals, even nowadays, would ever say such thing.

Actually, many do. They might not use my vulgar description of their ideas, but overwhelmingly the mainstream western intellectual culture is assured western superiority.

In the 60's and 70's, the height of marxism domination in the academia, nobody would (OK, some would, but very very few).

Actually, it was the usual rhetoric back then.

---

I mean, let's take the holy, saintly, supremely divine process of the "free market". It is hailed, all the time, without any hint of irony, as the source of western superiority. What is ignored is that the west, has for ... like all the time ... broken virtually every trade rule in the book, which is the reason why West is dominating. Take Reagan. Reagan is the culmination of western hypocrisy . . . he was a violent aggressor, mass murderer and a traitor, but is hailed as the great (albeit tough) diplomat who ended cold war, he's often considered to the be great free trader, classical liberal and so forth, but in actual reality, he doubled US protective barriers and used public funds to revive and totally redo US industries. And there's a logic to it . . . protectionism increased growth, and growth inceases trade, trade increases prosperity. The west can lie, steal and cheat without anyone noticing . . . that's because our intellectual culture fabricates all sorts of fantastic myths, like Reagan.

But after WW2? C'mon. The only imperialism which found (a great legion) of apologists was the soviet one. Like Pablo Neruda, and Sartre, and well, pretty much all intellectuals.

What? Common, there was a lot of apologists of western imperialism. I'm even talking to some of them.

I won't even begin to address your Yugoslavia claims. Yeah, genocide was not the problem, the western bombardment was
Oooooooook.

To call what happened in Yugoslavia genocide would be to mock the victims of the holocaust. There was ethnic strife, and many died, but there no was no genocide. And according to some, it was due to the NATO that many of the worst atrocities took place.

I suppose you support sanctions against apartheid South Africa? So why not against one of the worst tyrants of the last decades? Plus Saddam was allowed to get food and medicine from abroad, he didn't because he was more concerned in smmugling weapons.

Actually, US even tried to ban vaccines, bombed water installations and so forth. It's pretty well documented, but I'm not going to deny Saddam played a role, but that should've been a reason not to support him, but west did support him, because he was thought to a better alternative to those people who would have overthrow him.

Not that much. WW2 was the turning point of marxist domination of the academic stablishment. Many communist intellectuals, after Ribbentrop-Molotov, claimed that Hitler was a peaceful man and the real villain was Britain.

hah

If anything pro-Nazi, pro-totalitarianist and pro-Fascist opinions came from the right-wing, the business people and policy makers. Many people considered Italian Fascism to be a noble experiment, and that Mussolini was a nice guy all that. In fact, the whole period of appeasement was probably the result of western admiration of Hitler and his pro-business policies. Americans, British and others were investing in Germany, giving them technologies (including American petroleum related techs) . . . it was a good place to invest... after all, Hitler was crushing organized labour, and gave businesses pretty free hands. Mussolini and Hitler were very popular in the west before the war, except maybe Mussolini remained popular for some time after that. I mean, Truman, Roosenvelt, Churchill all expressed such opinions.

Same is true with Stalin, Truman admired him and Churchill openly defended him in cabinet meetings. There was no concern about communist terror, stalinist tyranny . . . they were more concerned that Soviet Union would surpass United States in economic strenght. After all, Soviet Union had grown from a poor and corrupt agarian society into a massive, industrial super power in a single generation. Of course, Soviet Union was totalitarian hole, but it's not like our "supremely enlightened" leaders like Chemical Wilson and Truman really cared about democracy.

It makes no sense to discuss this with you. You are fanatically anti-Israel. More than many suicide bombers, I presume.

No, I'm not. I'm simply opposed to their policies. I'm opposed to suicide bombing of civilian targets as well, just as I'm opposed to dropping five-ton bombs on Beirut.

Well the smart Latin Americans (like the great liberal Símon Bolívar) predicted quite correctly, in the late 19th Century, that caudillo politics and an ignorant population would keep Latin America in a peripheric position for centuries. It has nothing to do with the US but rather with our own, internal shortcomings.

That's actually true to an extent, but US is also deeply, almost intimately involved in Latin America. Washington has been casting it's hegemonic shadow on Latin America for decades, economically strangulating countries, using money flows for example and also, often outright subversion and military aggression. It was Nixon that said "make the economy scream [in Chile to] prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him". Now Nixon was a smart crook, he knew how you strangulate countries. And then, through massive violence and bloodshed, you install a brutal tyrant who'll turn the country into a colony. Another example is Colombia, where US "war on drugs" has been waged for some time now. It has nothing do with drugs, but much more to do with driving poor peasants into slums and clearing the land for multinational corporations. Same is true with the various intervensions in the Caribbean, US has for a long time maintained an empire in this area. Take Haiti, which is a starving island that is exporting food to the united states, and then take Nicaragua and so forth.

Much like the Middle East, United States has been supporting regressive, violent regime to gain foothold over the resource-rich Latin America. US policy makers supported governments that behaved "rationally", meaning they were good for profits, but "irrational" regimes, meaning good for the people, were discouraged.

BTW Colombia is looking real good now compared to the times of leftist presidents. The right-wing regime is extremely popular, the economy is doing fine, criminality and murder rate is lower than in Brazil or Venezuela (highest in the continent), even in a state of civil war. Take a reality check every now and then.

Yeah, and I'm sure North Korea has a 100% literacy rate. Let's just say I suspect those claims, regardless of the source.

Colombia doesn't have a single, dissident media outlet. Colombia is not only worse for organized labour then any place in the world, but it's worse then the rest of the world combined. And there's a civil war, a brutal campaign waged against the people. Colombia is ruled by violent private tyrannies (and their drug producing death squads that form the sixth informal branch of the military,) and government oligarchy, which kills something like 5000 to 10,000 people every year, directly through violence and indirectly by massive pollution. I might pull out some other interesting facts when I'm less tired, but yeah, compared to Colombia Chavez's "crack down on dissident media" seems rather absurd.

I don't think he was either. For me he was a rather limilted philosopher with a tremendous ego, who tried to describe things which he did not understand. He was a bad guy, in the sense that he despised democracy and individual rights, but since he never took any action we can't put him in the same level as, say, Lenin.

Yeah, he lived in a very different world actually. He might've had a different idea what "western democracy" was. I don't really, I'm not that interested in Marx, but I know that he was the father of many of contemporary state policies, which are considered routine and not communism.

Yeah, they have secret meetings where they discuss which policies to use in order to enslave the Third World and trash the environment.

Actually I have no doubt that they do. If you really thing there are no clandestine associations in the great centres of power, then you're naive.

Of course what they believe, what they've fooled themselves with, is another different thing. We can't tell what they think, but we know what they do.

 

[Princeps]

Yeah, what probably had the effect of radicalising even more the leftists of the academic stablishment...

Could be possible. I mean, the collapse of the soviet union was a victory for socialism. Now people don't look at it as an example, instead (at least from my impression) they call for Democratic Socialism, which I also advocate. Democratic socialism was viewed as a threat even by the decision-makers in Kremlin.

I could make the case that social mobility in Communist societies is essentially the same as in Western societies, the only difference being that Westerners typically think they have more social mobility than they actually do.

Social mobility in soviet totalitarianism and neoliberalism is pretty much the same. I mean, in the USSR, it was possible for a puny peasant to become the leader of the entire state.

 

[innonimatu]

Well the smart Latin Americans (like the great liberal Símon Bolívar) predicted quite correctly, in the late 19th Century, that caudillo politics and an ignorant population would keep Latin America in a peripheric position for centuries. It has nothing to do with the US but rather with our own, internal shortcomings.

That's . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. A tremendously unequal power structure in almost every country, that's South America's curse. A situation inherited from colonial times but which South Americans, for a variety of reasons (including foreign interference) have never corrected. But that would deserve a separate topic.

BTW Colombia is looking real good now compared to the times of leftist presidents. The right-wing regime is extremely popular, the economy is doing fine, criminality and murder rate is lower than in Brazil or Venezuela (highest in the continent), even in a state of civil war. Take a reality check every now and then.

That's because the civil war effectively ended - all the groups are content with doing their own specialized extortion and have agreed to split the spoils.
he leftist presidents at least tried to make a country out of Colombia...

I don't think he was either. For me he was a rather limilted philosopher with a tremendous ego, who tried to describe things which he did not understand. He was a bad guy, in the sense that he despised democracy and individual rights, but since he never took any action we can't put him in the same level as, say, Lenin.

It appears to me that Marx understood far more about human society than you ever will, even with the benefit of one and a half century of research to draw upon. He had good reason to despise democracy and individual rights, or what passed for those in his time. And his insights on how society works and the purpose of democracy can still be applied today.

Many people considered Italian Fascism to be a noble experiment, and that Mussolini was a nice guy all that. In fact, the whole period of appeasement was probably the result of western admiration of Hitler and his pro-business policies. Americans, British and others were investing in Germany, giving them technologies (including American petroleum related techs) . . . it was a good place to invest... after all, Hitler was crushing organized labour, and gave businesses pretty free hands.

Mussolini's fascism/corporatism drew a lot on his experience with unions earlier. What he came up with was a system for managing all separate power centers, by having the government sponsor their organization (and supress competition, obviously).
A stable system, always popular with people in power, provided they can be on top. Communist parties worldwide would do something similar regarding organized labour.

our "supremely enlightened" leaders like Chemical Wilson and Truman really cared about democracy.

You meant "Chemical Winston", perhaps? No, he didn't care about democracy. All he cared about was the glorious British Empire and Britain's leading position in the world. In the end even he lost.

 

[luiz]

Yeah, that's because there are people who see beyond the right-wing mindless propaganda. You see, some people have read Marx, and seriously discuss his ideas. As I've said, many of the ideas he advocated are followed by western governments. Many of his ideas are believed to be obvious of any state institution.

Well of that can also be said about the CoC theory that you seem to hate so much. Just because there are people who have read it and want to seriously discuss it doesn't make it right or even well-thought.

Actually, many do. They might not use my vulgar description of their ideas, but overwhelmingly the mainstream western intellectual culture is assured western superiority.

I very much doubt that. The academic world is full of people who argue that the West is actually morally inferior.

I mean, let's take the holy, saintly, supremely divine process of the "free market". It is hailed, all the time, without any hint of irony, as the source of western superiority. What is ignored is that the west, has for ... like all the time ... broken virtually every trade rule in the book, which is the reason why West is dominating. Take Reagan. Reagan is the culmination of western hypocrisy . . . he was a violent aggressor, mass murderer and a traitor, but is hailed as the great (albeit tough) diplomat who ended cold war, he's often considered to the be great free trader, classical liberal and so forth, but in actual reality, he doubled US protective barriers and used public funds to revive and totally redo US industries. And there's a logic to it . . . protectionism increased growth, and growth inceases trade, trade increases prosperity. The west can lie, steal and cheat without anyone noticing . . . that's because our intellectual culture fabricates all sorts of fantastic myths, like Reagan.

Your problem is that you mix fair, even insightful, points with outright lunacy. You are entirely correct that the West has disrespected, sometimes violently, all rules of the market and of free trade. You are entirely correct that Reagan was not, at all, a classic liberal or a free trader. But to claim that the West is in a dominant position because it disrespected trade rules? That's absurd, and has no basis in reality whatsoever.

What? Common, there was a lot of apologists of western imperialism. I'm even talking to some of them.

There are, but they are a minority. A tiny minority in the academia.

To call what happened in Yugoslavia genocide would be to mock the victims of the holocaust. There was ethnic strife, and many died, but there no was no genocide. And according to some, it was due to the NATO that many of the worst atrocities took place.

OK. So when the UN passes a resolution against Isreal, it is all true. But when the UN says that what happened in Yugoslavia was genocide, it's all lies. Fact is there are documented cases of entire villages beign shot just because of their ethnic identity. That's ethnic cleansing, that's genocide. It's in fact much worse than anything the palestinians ever endured. Yet you support the palestinians and deny the yugoslavian genocide, because you are a partisan.

Actually, US even tried to ban vaccines, bombed water installations and so forth. It's pretty well documented, but I'm not going to deny Saddam played a role, but that should've been a reason not to support him, but west did support him, because he was thought to a better alternative to those people who would have overthrow him.

Point is Saddam could have got medicine and food despite the sanctions, which thus cannot be blamed for the lack of those items in Iraq. Now I'm not a big fan of sanctions, but they can be useful sometimes.

If anything pro-Nazi, pro-totalitarianist and pro-Fascist opinions came from the right-wing, the business people and policy makers. Many people considered Italian Fascism to be a noble experiment, and that Mussolini was a nice guy all that. In fact, the whole period of appeasement was probably the result of western admiration of Hitler and his pro-business policies. Americans, British and others were investing in Germany, giving them technologies (including American petroleum related techs) . . . it was a good place to invest... after all, Hitler was crushing organized labour, and gave businesses pretty free hands. Mussolini and Hitler were very popular in the west before the war, except maybe Mussolini remained popular for some time after that. I mean, Truman, Roosenvelt, Churchill all expressed such opinions.

Actually, opposition to appeasement came from imperialist, conservative Churchill. The british Labour Party, at that time a socialist party, was deeply commited to appeasement. And I insist, after the R-M Pact the communists engaged in an open propaganda campaign depicting Hitler as a peaceful man and Britain and France as imperialist aggressors.

Same is true with Stalin, Truman admired him and Churchill openly defended him in cabinet meetings. There was no concern about communist terror, stalinist tyranny . . . they were more concerned that Soviet Union would surpass United States in economic strenght. After all, Soviet Union had grown from a poor and corrupt agarian society into a massive, industrial super power in a single generation. Of course, Soviet Union was totalitarian hole, but it's not like our "supremely enlightened" leaders like Chemical Wilson and Truman really cared about democracy.

Churchill didn't like Stalin at all, though of course he saw in him perhaps England's only chance of surviving.

No, I'm not. I'm simply opposed to their policies. I'm opposed to suicide bombing of civilian targets as well, just as I'm opposed to dropping five-ton bombs on Beirut.

You sure are selective though. You make the palestinians look like the ultimate victims, while in reality many people are suffering more right now. Like say the blacks of Sudan. But because their oppressors are not israelis, many people seem to not give a damn.

That's actually true to an extent, but US is also deeply, almost intimately involved in Latin America. Washington has been casting it's hegemonic shadow on Latin America for decades, economically strangulating countries, using money flows for example and also, often outright subversion and military aggression. It was Nixon that said "make the economy scream [in Chile to] prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him". Now Nixon was a smart crook, he knew how you strangulate countries. And then, through massive violence and bloodshed, you install a brutal tyrant who'll turn the country into a colony. Another example is Colombia, where US "war on drugs" has been waged for some time now. It has nothing do with drugs, but much more to do with driving poor peasants into slums and clearing the land for multinational corporations. Same is true with the various intervensions in the Caribbean, US has for a long time maintained an empire in this area. Take Haiti, which is a starving island that is exporting food to the united states, and then take Nicaragua and so forth.

Much like the Middle East, United States has been supporting regressive, violent regime to gain foothold over the resource-rich Latin America. US policy makers supported governments that behaved "rationally", meaning they were good for profits, but "irrational" regimes, meaning good for the people, were discouraged.

The "economy screamed" on it's own due to Allende's complete mismanegement. Don't trust me, look at economic data. He ruined the country, it is obvious that only bad things could result (and they did, in the form of Pinochet).

Nicaragua was ruined by Ortega and the Sandinistas. Compare it to Costa Rica or Puerto Rico, who chose to stay aligned with the US. You may like the US or hate, but fact is they are a great opportunity for any poor country. Countries that have cooperated with them do better than those who engage in silly confrontation.

Yeah, and I'm sure North Korea has a 100% literacy rate. Let's just say I suspect those claims, regardless of the source.

Colombia doesn't have a single, dissident media outlet. Colombia is not only worse for organized labour then any place in the world, but it's worse then the rest of the world combined. And there's a civil war, a brutal campaign waged against the people. Colombia is ruled by violent private tyrannies (and their drug producing death squads that form the sixth informal branch of the military,) and government oligarchy, which kills something like 5000 to 10,000 people every year, directly through violence and indirectly by massive pollution. I might pull out some other interesting facts when I'm less tired, but yeah, compared to Colombia Chavez's "crack down on dissident media" seems rather absurd.

Uh, now that was a load of bull. Colombia has plenty of "dissenting" media outlets. They have opposition parties that actually have seats in Congress, unlike Venezuela.

The economy is indeed growing, the streets are indeed safe. Take whatever source you like, the UN, the World Bank, you name it. Or go there. My brother just came back from Cartagena, it seem like an awesome city. And safe too.

Yeah, he lived in a very different world actually. He might've had a different idea what "western democracy" was. I don't really, I'm not that interested in Marx, but I know that he was the father of many of contemporary state policies, which are considered routine and not communism.

Well he certainly was not fond of elections. He was very fond though of executing the opposition, robbing the enemy classes, etc. His comments on the Paris Commune are fairly enlightening.

Actually I have no doubt that they do. If you really thing there are no clandestine associations in the great centres of power, then you're naive.

Or you are crazy.

Of course what they believe, what they've fooled themselves with, is another different thing. We can't tell what they think, but we know what they do.

And who is "they"? Please tell me we're not talking about the Learned Elders of Zion!